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The recent Free Trade Agreement was signed with very little opposition. A small march was held in Auckland with an alarming absence of Trade Unions. With talks looming about the 'P4' deal which could see a similar FTA with the United States it is important we are aware of the comsequences! This article is a very good read.

Cora Fabros, from the Philippines, has been a high profile activist, domestically and internationally, for more than 30 years with the anti-bases, anti-nuclear and peace movement. She has been to New Zealand before, as a guest of the Anti-Bases Campaign. Cora will be touring New Zealand as the Asia/Pacific Coordinator of the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases.

The US has been on a global war footing since 2001 and sees the Asia/Pacific region, NZ’s backyard, as being of immense strategic significance. This is the region that Cora will be speaking about. In countries such as Japan (particularly Okinawa) and South Korea the huge US presence there covers the full range from nuclear warfighting bases to conventional combat bases to a whole variety of spybases. Despite having been kicked out of the Philippines by the world’s most successful anti-bases campaign in the early 1990s, the US military is now permanently entrenched back in that country, which it has designated “The Second Front In The War On Terror”. Guam, which is a US territory in the Pacific, has been turned into a major US nuclear warfighting base in recent years. Australia hosts a variety of US bases and has given the US permission to build its first new spybase there in 40 years. And, of course, New Zealand hosts one medium level US military transport base (at Christchurch Airport) which is a cog in the chain of regional US bases; and two “New Zealand” spybases, at Tangimoana and Waihopai. The latter is NZ’s single most important contribution to all US wars.

2008 is election year in both NZ and the US (this only happens every 12 years). The Anti-Bases Campaign believes that it is vital that NZ’s continuing role as a small but very important satellite of the US military and intelligence empire be thoroughly ex-posed and that voters demand that the Government finish the job begun when this country became nuclear free and out of ANZUS in the 1980s. Cora Fabros’ tour is vital in providing an international context for how we aid and abet that empire. US bases and the struggle against them are a huge issue for many of our neighbours.

While it’s commendable that John Key wants everybody to have access to broadband, his proposed method of going about it leaves a lot to be desired. If spending $1.5 billion of taxpayers’ money on it is his definition of a public private partnership, we’d love to see his definition of a subsidy for Telecom.

What John Key is proposing is nothing more than corporate welfare on a massive scale, which is ironic indeed from a party that for years has mined a rich electoral vein of beneficiary bashing. Well, here’s one very big bludger that richly deserves bashing.

Why should the long suffering New Zealand public pay for the manifest shortcomings of this recidivist transnational corporation? The corporatisation and sale overseas of Telecom is still the biggest and worst example of privatisation of a State asset. Under its foreign owners, Telecom has creamed umpteen billions in profits, considerably more than the $1.5 billion that it reckons it can’t afford to complete the broadband rollout. And the vast majority of those profits have been paid out as dividends to its shareholders (up to 98 cents in the dollar at one stage), not reinvested into its infrastructure.

Telecom won the 2007 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand (it’s the only transnational to have been a finalist in every annual Roger Award since the start, in 1997) and one of the major reasons the judges gave it this most coveted of prizes was because of its flagrant lack of reinvestment. The full Judges’ Report can be read online athttp://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Roger/Roger2007.pdf The Report includes a very detailed and fascinating Financial Analysis of Telecom’s accounts by Sue Newberry, Associate Professor of Accountancy at the University of Sydney. That conclusively demonstrates how figures can be massaged and re-titled to present a more flattering picture of reinvestment than is actually the case.

If the taxpayer is going to spend $1.5 billion on providing a service that Telecom can’t or won’t, but from which Telecom will continue to profit handsomely, then the logical conclusion is obviously that the State should take back its former asset so that the New Zealand people can once again fully benefit from what is rightfully ours, and this most strategic of assets (the Government has now prioritised strategic assets) can be operated in the national interest, not that of foreign owners and shareholders.

Welcome to the very first post of Watchblogaotearoa. Watchblogaotearoa is the online tool for the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA). CAFCA is taking a long overdue step into the blogosphere and hopes to take part in some information sharing and friendly debate. If you would like to find out more about CAFCA please visit our website:

This blog hopes to fill in the gaps between CAFCA's quarterly publication - Foreign Control Watchdog. We will endaevour keep readers up to date with issues of privatisation, foreign investment and foreign control as they arise. Over the next few weeks I will introduce you to some of the characters who have kept CAFCA going over the years. In the meantime, from our website, CAFCA stands for:The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) believes that the independence of most countries is being eroded away. This erosion has taken place because most of the world's economy is now owned and controlled by a relatively small number of huge transnational corporations (TNCs).Today these TNC's have monopoly control over most of the world's resources, its trade, its industrial production, and the booming services sector, which covers everything from finance to transport. With this control TNC's can use the economies of individual nations for their own benefit in a way which is against the interests of the people of those nations. Most Third World countries are totally at the mercy of the TNC's. CAFCA is most concerned at the local effects of this worldwide trend. Aotearoa's independence is rapidly disappearing and with its "free market" policies, including encouragement of foreign investment and unrestricted foreign capital flows, the New Zealand Government is actively promoting this process.

CAFCA promotes the concept of an independent Aotearoa based on policies of economic, military and political self-reliance, using Aotearoa's resources for the benefit of the people of Aotearoa, and refusing involvement in the self-serving military and economic treaties of big foreign countries. We oppose foreign control, irrespective of which country it involves. We oppose the exploitation of Aotearoa's people and resources by foreign companies, and any foreign military or intelligence activities in Aotearoa. CAFCA does not support the replacement of foreign exploiters with local ones. New Zealand big business interests are collaborating with foreign companies in the exploitation of its own country - its only loyalty is to improve profits. CAFCA IS NOT RACIST. We do not oppose the people of foreign countries, only the transnational corporations (TNC's) exploiting the people of New Zealand.